In order to ensure the transmission and storage of miscellaneous items of information, representing reminders for different actions requiring to be performed at different intervals and, in a way, constituting a sequence of instructions, a manual, an analytical repertory, etc., it is known to use flat information-carrying media, generally made of paper, cardboard or the like. Such flat carriers may be simple sheets or cards on which the items of information to be stored are transcribed. Said carriers are qualified as loose and it is obvious that their use raises problems of filing, of storing and activation for users having no permanent and stable means of filing and indexing. Such movable supports are known for their inefficiency and are very often responsible for losses of transcribed information, which is quite the reverse of their initially intended purpose.
To overcome this drawback, it has also been proposed to constitute the movable carriers in the form of cards designed to be kept in box-shaped files in which the cards are stored edgewise to facilitate the searching, identifying and handling operations.
Although these systems are satisfactory on the whole, they have however a major disadvantage in that their use implies the existence of a filing container. This container makes the system difficult to use, especially whenever several cards have to be moved from a filing location to a processing location where they are actively used. Indeed, if the transfer can be ensured by means of a second container or file, it is obvious that this cannot be done when such cards need to be accompanied with processing files or when they need to be taken away to, for example, processing locations such as working sites.
Moreover, such cards of ordinary standard format generally offer no possibility for a synoptic visual filing, so that the retrieval of each momentarily active card raises, in every case, a problem which can only be solved with the addition of identification jumpers. Although such a method is feasible, it is quite obvious that it increases the cost of each card and implies a constant check of the jumpers to ascertain their position, their state, to check the risk of damage, etc.
Comparably, it has also been proposed to produce the movable information carriers in the form of T-shaped cards, i.e. cards comprising a shouldered upper area. Each of said cards is inserted in a slit provided in a support such as a display board. Such cards give an overall vision of the characteristic of a plurality of cards carried by a board, and offer as a result a better service than that given by the method described hereinabove. However, the drawback with these cards resides in the difficulty to file, use, store and index them when they need to be associated to a movable file or else when they are meant to constitute a memorandum or a reminder, being, for this intermediate or momentary purpose, retrieved from the said board and placed in the vicinity of the working station of an operator requiring information.
Moreover, the usable area of such cards is generally higher than wide so that the information to be stored raises first a problem of transcription then a reading problem.
And also, such T-shaped cards are not always easily accessible from their upper area when they are placed on a display support and the user often finds it difficult to insert or to retrieve one card with respect to a pack of cards.
It should also be mentioned that such cards naturally rest in vertical suspension on their shoulders and that there are no means locking them in position on display medium. Consequently, even assuming that a display medium can be portable, its use is practically impossible because of the moving out of sequence or misplacement invariably resulting therefrom, added to the risk of losing one or more cards.